The meeting was held in the premises of the Best Western Premier Hotel Katajanokka, an amazing building of the unique former prison built in 1805 and transformed into a modern hotel in 2007.

The event was opened by Ms.Mirjami Laitinen, Director General of the Finnish Tax Administration, who welcomed the delegates and provided them with the overview of the structure of the Finnish Tax Administration and its strategy towards the fight against tax fraud, which was also a subject of the second presentation delivered by representatives of the Finnish Tax Administration.

The agenda of the meeting included three main sessions: (1) Energy Sector and related issues, (2) Methods and Tools used to Tackle VAT Frauds and (3) Reverse Charge Mechanism.

The last two meetings of the Area Group included sessions relating to the energy sector. Because of the huge interest of the Area Group members, these meetings provided the delegates with an opportunity to discuss in more detail several issues linked to the energy sector. For this meeting, the session commenced with a presentation from a representative of the Grexel Company which concentrates its activities on the trade in energy certificates in the European Union. Following the presentation, the delegates from Norway, the United Kingdom and Sweden focused their presentations on a renewable obligation certificate scheme and VAT fraud in the electricity market.

The second session of the event focused on controlling the e-world and new trends in IT. The delegates had also an opportunity to listen to news from EUROPOL regarding its current work in the area of fighting tax fraud.

The final session was dedicated to problems associated with the reverse charge mechanism. The session was introduced by a delegate from Latvia, who focused on the pros and cons in applying this instrument used to tackle VAT fraud whereas the delegates had the opportunity during work group sessions to discuss in more detail the energy sector and reverse charge mechanism problems.

Other areas addressed during the event included a “News Headlines” session, during which all members of the Area Group had the opportunity to appraise their fellow delegates on activities occurring in their regions.

The meeting concluded with updates from the Task Team meetings which took place prior to the meeting of the Area Group.

The chairpersons of three Area Group Task Teams presented summaries of their teams activities and informed delegates that all task teams will shortly finish work on their reports. The Task Team on E-commerce will have their final meeting in March to complete their report on Deep Web Investigation.

Full details of the event and task team updates, along with future Area Group activities will be included in the Post Event Report that will be produced shortly.